Inspired by the spiraling shape of a reindeer-horn bangle, Sara Wheeler travels counterclockwise around the North Pole through the territories belonging to Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, in this memoir by the author of Too Close to the Sun. Along the way Wheeler notes the transformations of what once seemed an unchangeable landscape, and considers the ramifications of mounting pollution in the Arctic Circle, and how it will affect the rest of the Earth. Smashing through the Arctic Ocean with the crew of a Russian icebreaker, shadowing the endless Trans-Alaska Pipeline with a tough Idaho-born outdoorswoman, herding reindeer with the Lapps, and visiting the haunting, deceptively peaceful lands of the Gulag, Wheeler brings the Arctic’s many contradictions to life.